Real-Time Monitoring of Bone Fracture Recovery by Using Aware, Sensing, Smart, and Active Orthopedic Devices

Abstract

Although external fixation is being widely used by orthopedic surgeons in the treatment of bone fractures, the surgical procedure and recovery are still followed by a number of possible complications which can significantly decrease the treatment’s efficiency (cost) and effectiveness (optimal healing). Inability of the physician to have continuous insight into different data, fracture healing process, patient’s behavior, and environmental factors could be considered as a reason for these complications. In this paper, we propose the improvement of a fixation device design, which implements paradigms of aware, sensing, smart, and active devices and thus, enables real-time monitoring of bone fracture healing. Such a design is considered as IoT gateway, capable to classify occurrences of events and milestones in patient recovery process, based on the data from different sensors, and report those to the specialists or related healthcare information system. The design is implemented in the example of classifying patient’s compliance to the prescribed behavior in the postoperative treatment of bone fractures.